


The Truth in the Light

by Fairleigh



Category: The Lighthouse (2019)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Power Dynamics, Sexual Content, Toxic Masculinity, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/pseuds/Fairleigh
Summary: Thomas saw that truth in the light, and he recoiled from it. Then, he fell.
Relationships: Thomas Wake/Ephraim Winslow
Comments: 11
Kudos: 73
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Truth in the Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/gifts).



They treated him like the shit on their bootheels, those Canadians, and how dare they? How dare they?!

Those goddamned lily-livered Canadians, who never fought in no Revolution, who still bent their knees to some Queen Victoria bitch ruling from some stupid little island clear across the Atlantic. Those Canadians, they were he-women, women in trousers, all of them, every goddamned one of them.

Whereas he — Thomas Howard or Tommy to his friends — was a red-blooded American, an American born and bred. Name Howard meant “strong of spirit,” and he was. He was, goddammit! He was descended from men who’d fought and bled and died so that they’d never, that their children and their children’s children would never, be made to kneel before nobody.

He’d hated foreman Winslow, had Tommy. Goddamned Canady son of a bitch, breaking his back, working each man like he was two horses. No, horses got more respect, got groomed and watered each evening; Winslow treated Tommy like a goddamned mongrel _dog_.

He’d wanted Winslow dead, had Tommy. Dreamt every night of big, tall Winslow, with his biceps like boulders. Dreamt of taking an ax to Winslow’s skull and splitting it open like rotten wood, delighting in the violence. Woken each morning with wood that wasn’t logs that he’d have to jerk until it went soft again. But then the logroll accident had gone and done it for him. Tommy? He hadn’t lifted a finger.

Name Winslow meant “barrow” or “burial mound.” Maybe Winslow weren’t so big and strong and tough after all, if wood gone and crushed him like that.

It was like wishing a man dead made him dead. Who’d have thought?

~*~*~

Not Tommy. But _he_ ain’t Tommy anymore.

He was Ephraim Winslow, and he was big and tall, biceps like boulders. Ephraim was firstborn son of Joseph in the good book, Joseph who was most beloved by God the Father and _his_ father Jacob.

No more trees or forests for him, nosiree. He’d rather start clean, a spiffy clean slate, let the ocean wash the sins of his past off his conscience. All that old guilt about what Tommy shouldn’t want but couldn’t help wanting. So Ephraim had decided to become a wickie. A lighthouse keeper.

Far away offshore, alone on an island, manning a tower of light, guiding the shipmen safe and home. He thought he’d like that. Respectable work, it was. Good money, it was. The farther offshore, the better the money. The farther offshore, the fewer goddamned lily-livered bastards to trouble him. Figured he could make something of himself as a wickie.

The old wickie, now that was a man. A man’s man. Flirted with nuns after his leg got cut off, left wife and children on land to man the lighthouse, kept the keys to the logbook, to the shining white lantern. Ephraim saw him at night, standing in the light, shirt off, cock out, straight and strong, jism salty as the sea, and Ephraim, he dreamed about it, about the old wickie, straight and strong, filling him with salt, with light —

Lit safe and home. He wanted it. He’d always wanted a father like the old wickie.

~*~*~

But instead Ephraim was checking lobster traps and shoveling coal and scrubbing floors and emptying chamber pots and working like a dog, a goddamned _dog_. Who the fuck was holding his leash?

_Who the fuck was holding his leash?!_

The old wickie’s name was Wake, and he was awake when Ephraim was asleep. He led their work at the lighthouse, and Ephraim had no choice but to follow in his wake. A man could get dragged under, if he weren’t careful.

After the storm, after they couldn’t leave, after there wasn’t enough food but too much liquor … Ephraim couldn’t understand, not truly. But things, yessiree, they did change.

The work was still hard, dog hard, but he was a man, not a mongrel, and his mind was free to wander — free to conjure — even whilst he was chained to feeding that goddamned coal furnace. And conjure was what it did; it conjured mermaids, and krakens, and lord kings of the sea, and one-eyed gull spirits of murdered wickies.

He dreamed of them, and he dreamed of fucking them. Or sometimes he was the one being fucked, being held down, being made to scream. Reward with one hand and punishment with the other. And punishment could be the reward. There was safety in submission. Bow, kneel, _and be loved_. Wake was a sea god, a lord of the lighthouse, and he smelled of rotten teeth and week-old food in his beard and farts and jism. No perfumed pretty lady, _him_.

Ephraim didn’t smell pretty either most mornings after he’d spoilt himself and his sheets.

~*~*~

What was there to be seen in the light? The question consumed him until there was nothing left.

Saint Thomas was one of the Lord Jesus Christ’s Twelve Apostles. Name Thomas meant “twin.” Thomas Howard and Thomas Wake? They were twins, they were. One old, one young, both the same. God and dog. Read one backwards and you get the other.

So that was what he was learnt in the light. There never were no gods, no dogs. Only imperfect, weak, foolish men who’d have killed everything they loved were they not too lily-livered chickenshit to go through with it. Naw, they let it die instead. Like they let Jesus die on his cross two thousand years ago.

Wake was a goddamned bastard and a liar, but he was neither god nor dog. He was a man — merely a man, a man like any other — afraid of his own shadow but pretending his shit don’t stink. Harmless blusterer, he was. He had hardly more power over anything than Ephraim did, than Tommy; he had only the power what was given him by other men, of the pen and the logbook, of the lighthouse light. But he lied to himself too, did Wake, because secretly, he wanted to be loved too.

 _That_ love, men couldn’t never call it their own.

Thomas saw that truth in the light, and he recoiled from it. Then, he fell.


End file.
